Needed: business school reform

As a business graduate, I’m a strong advocate for business school reform.

I left Carleton University feeling as though I didn’t have a balanced enough education for social/environmental issues (and the International Business had much more than the regular B.Comm!!!) This was one of the main reasons for coming to Finland. (And one of the main reasons I have been upset with Carleton’s management).

Business schools have an important role in society. Most of the people who run (ran) Wall Street are MBA graduates or at least come from this discipline. New York Times had a great article “Is it Time to Retrain B-schools?“

“It is so obvious that something big has failed,” said Ángel Cabrera, dean of the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz. “We can look the other way, but come on. The C.E.O.’s of those companies, those are people we used to brag about. We cannot say, ‘Well, it wasn’t our fault’ when there is such a systemic, widespread failure of leadership.”

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There are also calls to make management a profession like law or medicine, with a code of conduct, a certification examination and continuing education.(see my post on where’s the iron ring for business graduates?)

Of course there’s a link with what’s being taught in the classroom and what’s going on (and what went on) in the markets.

This is why I get pretty passionate about changing things around here.

WHAT I WANT TO SEE: interdisciplinary business education

A. bring non-business students into the mix to get different perspectives on business issues. (Business students usually become managers and likely, their team will be pretty diverse with engineers, technicians, arts people etc. By getting people to work together in the classroom, they’ll have a hand at dealing with diverse perspectives -  which usually lead to better results – and limits the ‘profit, profit, profit’ mentality.)

B. teach business students to fully understand environmental & social problems. Without this understanding, we can’t expect them to incorporate them into their business strategies or create new problems to solve these issues.  Global and local problems need to be solved and school is a place to learn them.

WHAT I’M CURRENTLY DOING : Setting up a Net Impact Chapter & working with Global Venture Lab

This year, I’ve worked with people at JYU to set up a Central Finland Net Impact Chapter.

Net Impact is a “is a global network of leaders who are changing the world through business.” They have 254 chapters in 25 countries… that’s over 10 000 MBA students and professionals working toward this goal.

We’re still just getting started but there’s a lot of want and will to make this happen.  Things that we want to focus on right now:

1. getting an Environmental Manager on campus (ridiculous that we don’t have one – there are savings to be achieved!)

2. networking with businesses, other schools, faculty in the region to promote sustainable business

3. events & perhaps a little more…

We’ll see how it goes (starting up a club is always hard when people are really busy – and it’s good learning experience for me too in remembering those high school leadership conferences – leadership in practice is  pretty tricky and I’m learning what I need to work on for my own skills!) but hopefully we’ll get this thing lifted and see some real results.

Working for GVL – we work with students outside of the business schools (arts & science based) and teach them basic business skills and get them involved with companies to learn the complex tricks of the trade.

Ok, but now.. back to Net Impact & Global Venture Lab work:)

Serious news. MTV is changing its tune & The Buried Life is surfacing

Wow. Just wow.

I wrote my plea for MTV last year.

You have incredible powers to make change happen. To tell people to give a damn.  To make people feel. To instill better values as a society.

Please, use your power and creativity to smarten up our generation… not dumb us down.

And now…

From the NYT FRONT PAGE,

“Meet MTV for the era of Obama. After years of celebrating wealth, celebrity and the vapid excesses of youth, MTV is trying to gloss its escapist entertainment with a veneer of positive social messages.“

And who’s going to be the flagship show?

The Buried Life.

These four guys “travel the globe in a purple transit bus to complete a list of ‘100 things to do before you die’ and to help and encourage others to go after their own lists.” I’ve watched some of their episodes online as my close friend here is good friends with the guys from his days at McGill.  Extremely cool and moving.

I’ve said this before, but many people (especially in MTV’s target age category) are stuck in a rut.

“What to do with my life?” “Where do I fit?” “Is this it?”

I just had 2 friends tell me they were living the quarterlife crisis.  Not for all cases, but MTV’s escapism efforts into the land of riches, bitches and idolizing the materialistic and shallow lifestyles has surely only exasperated the movement of “feeling nothing”.

I don’t expect MTV to completely shift overnight and they won’t, but I welcome this moral & strategic shift like a breath of fresh spring air:)

For all those (no matter what age) wonder “is this it?”  Stay tuned for the Buried Life airing (tentatively) on MTV on July 20th worldwide. And, while waiting, take a look at their website and why not start your own list… Makes me realize, why I haven’t made one yet? Note to self, start one today:)

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Pictures from North Korea

This one on Foreign Policy caught my eye this morning.

Renowned documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve entered North Korea by posing as a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory. Despite 24-hour surveillance by North Korean minders, he took arresting photographs of Pyongyang and its people-images rarely captured and even more rarely distributed in the West. They show stark glimmers of everyday life in the world’s last gulag.

The pictures and stories beneath eerily revoke my imaginations of what 1984 would be like…

Death of pulp and paper in Canada?

What a sad ending…

The pulp and paper industry is something close to me, having grown un in a p&p town and having a dad work there my entire life and having dinner conversations about recovery boilers… I’ve blogged about it a few times.

AbitibiBowater, the world’s largest newsprint producer just filed for bankruptcy yesterday.

Can’t say we didn’t see this coming. Globe has a good follow up story on how the industry shifted looong time ago and the management just hasn’t kept up.

U.S. newsprint demand has been falling for more than 20 years. After peaking at 12.3 million tonnes in 1987, sales were just 6.8 million tonnes in 2008…In a sense, AbitibiBowater has been hurtling toward this moment for the past 20 years as the decline in global newsprint demand set in – at first, gradually, and now precipitously.

Going back to a post from last Dec., I wrote Canadian Pulp & Paper industry: a problem is just an opportunity in disguise.

the industry’s failure isn’t so much a market-based (even with our extraordinarily high dollar), it’s not even a demand-based failure (paper consumption is up, but not newsprint- our main product) -IT’S VISION FAILURE.

My point (granted, much of this is thanks to conversations with my Daddio) is that the forest industry has plenty of potential in developing “new” innovative products (didn’t they get the hint after 20 years of decreased demand???!) and BIOENERGY. Yes, pulp and paper industry is the best suited to take over (sustainably!) the bioenergy industry.

Grrr.. it just makes me mad to see that executive direction from the top has led an industry giant flailing – and small towns and local communities across the rural north fighting to survive.

That being said, of course a giant company is going to fail. Isn’t that one of the lessons we’re learning right now with the credit crisis??? The “too big to fail” idea is pathetic and goes against the rules of capitalism.  Companies just shouldn’t be allowed to get that big.

So, I wonder how AbitibiBowater will play out. 

I hope that there’s a breaking apart of the giant and with smaller, more flexible management allowing individual plants to stay open – AND START CHANGING THEIR STRATEGY.

Instead of just letting this historic (and vital!) Canadian industry die, we need new leadership at the helm of this industry and we need lots.

Easter holiday with Grapes & Mockingbirds

Back from Easter holiday in Denmark/Sweden and now getting back into the grind.

I disconnected myself from the world (and work) – explored new cities, rode a bike along the Danish sea line, finally felt Spring and just let my mind slip into the world of classic fiction and good ol’ thought.

I finished off two classics that I feel like I should have read already: Grapes of Wrath & To Kill a Mockingbird.

Two timeless books full of morals and values of a bygone era that is (perhaps even more so) relevant for today.

Actually, Steinbeck’s classic was just in the BBC yesterday for its 70^th anniversary. The article’s worth a read and hits on the point that it’s “rooted in the tragedies of the Great Depression, but speaks directly to the harsh realities of 2009″.

Steinbeck “warned against runaway materialism, institutional imperialism, intellectual hypocrisy, and rampant greed – all inevitable and regrettable by-products of an advanced industrialised capitalist society.

“If I wanted to destroy a nation,” he wrote in 1966, “I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.”

Two fabulous books that make you remember why letting your mind venture into the fictitious world benefits the real world.

Ahh, if only there were more Atticus Finches in this world…

And ahh, if only Finland was in Spring mode like Denmark & Sweden…

a desert city in bright shining ruins

Dubai.

The name exudes luxury, excess & riches.  It’s the city where anything is possible. Want to buy a man-made island in the shape of of France? How about going skiing in the desert? Or sleeping in the most expensive hotel?

Great read in Toronto Star about how not to build a city.  All I can say is.. of course.

But, Dubai’s main revenue isn’t from oil. It’s only 6% - it’s mostly in tourism and real estate. So of course they won’t stop this unsustainable path of growth – that’d be cutting the hand that feeds them.

Keeping with the superlatives though, the UAE is, however, creating the most sustainable city. Interesting concept and I’m not about to put it down but perhaps the government should re-look at its current cities and start improving those instead of constructing fresh new “eco-cities” – it won’t be so eco if it’s in close proximity to cities like Dubai.

The more I think about it though, more power (and responsibility)  should be directed to cities for putting us on a sustainable track.  More so than national plans – our investments (the good the bad and the ugly) into cities will be the deciding factor of which way we develop the future.

Dubai’s current plan is not one I want to see followed…

Elämä on laiffii (re: life)

Ever get the feeling that life is whizzing past you, yet, time is slowing down?

I was just complaining to friends today that by not blogging lately, I feel like a chunk of me is missing – my critical- thinking/know-what’s-going-on/feel-stimulated – chunk. Life has been so packed with ‘things’ that you occasionally forget what’s really important… my thinking out loud on this blog is one of those things.

But, to give the brief update on life:

WORK LIKE MAD

At work, we launched Global Venture Lab in Finland on March 23^rd. I’ve briefly talked about this here but I’m working with a ’startup’ team at the University of Jyväskylä creating a global platform to grow global businesses – bringing the rich knowledge inside a university out (science of commercialization) and bringing business competence skills in (i.e. bringing serial  entrepreneurs/new companies into the classroom etc.) Oh yeah, main motto is “for problems worth solving” – my passion in those 4 words.

I was the event planner for this launch, which was part of the 9^th annual V2C Forum (Venture-to-Capital) which was 2 days longs… and I was  event-coordinator for an event I thought up last year, JYU Talks. (I could go on for a while about this one – so I’ll paste it into a new post to not make this a novel;)

Aside from planning/running about 2 weeks worth of events in the last weeks of March, I also…

GRADUATED.

Yep, I’m a Masters. Handed in my thesis (eek, almost a month ago) “Growth Venturing for Sustainability” or rather – Conceptual Analysis and Insider’s Empirical Case of Growth Venturing for Sustainability if we want to get real academic;)

All I need to do now is write up a quick acknowledgement letter and get it into a black cover and send it to my sponsors. Exciting task actually – I’ve always loved seeing a finished product.

MOVED.

I’m out of the student ghetto! (Was never in one here in Finland to be honest.. but out of student housing at least). I have my own two-room downtown (ahem, of a tiny city) apartment – complete with a shower which goes over the toilet to save space:) To touch it off, I have new Iittalla wine glasses that make me feel oh so classy cooking dinner, listening to jazz, having friends over. The Finns love their glassware and I’m hooked as well.

TURNED 24.

Yes, to add to the graduate/move/work-like-mad mode, I turned 24.

I just looked back to my 23 things that I’ve learned (or at least trying to learn…) post. Oh, the wisdom in me 1 year ago… What can I say – still learning;)

That being said, I need to add one more to the list.

24. Toughen up.

I’ve had it fairly easy my whole life – I need to learn how to take some hits;)

Lots going on yet i should listen to #7 more often… life hasn’t been quite balanced… But getting back into writing this post feels like a step in the right direction.

Will post more on my baby – JYU Talks & GVL soon enough.

Oh, and “Elämä on laiffii” just means life is “life” – spoken by a true Finnish hero – Matti Nykänen – the olympic champion & national drunk.  It’s a finnish joke.

Rick Mercer goes to the Hoito & sauna in Thunder Bay – a must watch for Finns:)

Oh my, I knew this was coming up but just had a chance to watch. It’s not so much that Rick is even that funny (although he so often is just hilarious) – it’s just so nice to see parts of both my worlds (Tbay & Finland) on the CBC!

Check it out here.

Oh, and ahh.. perhaps I shouldn’t ruin it for the regulars that go to the Hoito (best place for a sunday brunch in Tbay:) – The word hoito in Finland has a whole new meaning now.  The real meaning is “treatment” but it’s now slang for one-night stand.  Pretty funny…

On another note, will have to post soon about what I’m doing here…

Extremely busy with event planning two big events happening on campus in next couple weeks.

Before I blog – check out www.jyutalks.fi (other event – will explain later)

In the meantime, it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m at the office – yes, busy time. But seeing Rick Mercer jump in the snow was a must:)

global climate – local responsibility?

Still on this local theme here.

When I read things like this it makes me realize how much waste is going into national/international scale projects when all of that might be better going into local projects that make real change.

I’ve already talked about my lack of interest in the global warming debate simply because I don’t really care too much about EMISSIONS and CO2.  I believe that it’s bad and we’re destroying the world with fossil fuel use, it’s just that I see it as a much more holistic problem. It’s everything! Don’t just focus on one aspect.

Anyways, what if a lot more money just  went to the local economy’s for setting up better biowaste management (methane gas in the landfill is a big source of co2),  microgeneration plants (no big power plants), better transit, better care for the local agriculture etc?

Give the power to the municipalities and hold them to change and maybe we’ll see some more action.

Better yet, make a “national” campaign to enable the communities to compete with each other. People know what’s going on in their cities/towns usually more so than the whole country. Put up a campaign where the people can get involved and hold their local mayors etc. accountable – more you do, more money you can get for changing your community. Get people working together at that level and then in the newspapers have some kind of rating system of who’s doing what.

Make sense? Just a thought while drinking my morning coffee:)

Trade & Development: let the protectionists in?

Ok this has to be quick. Tons and tons to do and it’s almost 7pm.  In event planning mode like a mad woman.

Anyways, I just got back from a lecture on Trade & Development.

Interesting…

My background is in International Business, concentration in Int’l Trade & Marketing. So, I know a fair amount about GATT, WTO, regional trade agreemements (stumbling blocks or building blocks etc.), trade & development etc. etc. etc. Not always fresh in memory but Bretton Woods is located somewhere back there.

Anyways.. first lecture I’ve ever been to on Trade &Development where the lecturer espoused protectionism….

I was like seriously? This goes against almost every grain of theory I have ever been taught.  But, that just makes it all the more interesting. Especially since this has been one of the (many) ideological issues of which I won’t plant my feet solidly on the ground – I like to see both sides, which gets fairly annoying at times.  Background in international business yet I highly believe in supporting the local economy. I loved “buying Canadian” and I try to buy veggies with the “Suomi” sticker.

Granted, before I continue.. he wasn’t for protectionism per se. He just stated some of the merits of taking care of one’s own during economic hardship – and gave examples of how China, India, Finland and even Great Britain and America did this occasionally. Quickly – States during depression – i have a feeling that didn’t work out quite so well but as for China and India – true true, they cut themselves off of some bits to prepare themselves to join in this global world.  When countries that aren’t developed go straight into the global world they often tend to fail. Structural adjustment programs in the 80’s anyone? Then again, aren’t we supposed to do Trade NOT Aid!

But still – this is a good time to keep open the debate since Obama just ‘diluted’ but will still go with the “Buy American” clause in the US economic package. Right away when I heard about that, I as Canadian  like “Noooo…  This is gonna be bad for Canada”

But then again, working the local economy can be a good thing. Not always economically, but if you look at other measures, it’s pretty interesting. Who knew that little old isolated Cuba would be the only country in the world to have sustainable development.  Look at their health care system.

And Deep Economy (the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future) was one of my favourite books, not espousing protectionism.. but definitely all for the local movement.

Big fundamental questions for a girl in international business working with “global growth venturing” all the while sitting on a fence about the developing and pushing for the local economy. Not to say I am now espousing protectionism. Not at all.  That usually leads to monopolies which leads into collecting monopoly rents (That ones for/from you Jay;)

It begs the question though… how sustainable is this global trade world if the only country that fits the bill is CUBA? Almost makes me laugh.. or cry, not sure yet.

Anyways open for debate. Times running out and need to get back to work!!!

BUT WHAT’S MORE SUSTAINABLE FOR THE FUTURE?

GO THE LOCAL ROUTE ?

GO FOR GLOBAL TRADE?

and more importantly.. how do you do both personally, commercially and politically?

Interesting. Will ponder while I desperately try to get invitations out…